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Jan. 12, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:48
January 12, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
It was interesting on Good Morning America today, and it was interesting what wasn't in the New York Times today that they no doubt heard, that they edited out.
And it's interesting how people, some people, are upset with me over what I said yesterday.
So we'll deal with all of that and we'll just keep plodding on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
I am Rush Limbaugh.
Great to be with you, folks, as is the case each and every day here at the Limbaugh Institute.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882.
The email address, lrushbaugh at EIBNet.com.
Good morning, America in New York City was truncated today because of coverage of the snowbomb that went through there.
I got a tip earlier today that one of the shooter's friends appeared on Good Morning America and said the kid never listened to talk radio.
Well, now I, Mr. Talk Radio, found that pretty interesting, the shooter.
So we tried to find it on the New York feed of Good Morning America.
It wasn't there.
So we got a transcript of the program.
We found out that the kid did say it, that the friend of the shooter did say it.
We had to get it from the Cleveland feed.
And if we weren't able to do that, we were going to get it on the West Coast feed.
Here it is.
This morning on Good Morning America, a portion of an interview Ashley Banfield did with Zach Osler, who is a friend, a high school friend of the shooter Jared Lochner.
Ashley Banfield, what was his motive in Saturday's attack?
And what about the speculation that he may have been fueled by partisan politics and rhetoric in the media?
He did not watch TV.
He disliked the news.
He didn't listen to political radio.
He didn't take sides.
He wasn't on the left.
He wasn't on the right.
Doesn't that kind of debunk virtually all speculation that we have heard since 30 minutes after the shooting on Saturday in the media?
And now, you know what the latest template in the media is?
Why are we on the right so defensive about this?
You know, Mark Halperin got this one started.
You know, these guys, Time Magazine, these guys on the right.
I'm just, you know, they're reacting here.
It's a little bit over the top.
What do you mean a little bit over the top?
We have been accused of being complicit in murder for four days.
It's not an isolated incident.
Ever since 1990, the political left in this country has been mobilized to try to get this program off the air via one form of government regulation or another or other kind of public pressure.
They have never stopped.
I was blamed for the Oklahoma shooting bombing in 1995.
This is not an isolated event.
Every time something like this happens, some disaster, it's always, I mean, it doesn't take 30 minutes for the media to start speculating, but it's talk radio and now Fox News and the blogs on the right and everything else.
I got a lot of people who sent me emails yesterday.
Rush, you're a little bit over the top, I thought yesterday, when you said the Democrat Party profits from murder.
It wants to profit.
How else can I say this?
Try to put yourself in my shoes.
And I want you to try to do this outside of the normal give and take and ebb and flow of the daily hardball that is politics.
Here we have a deranged, obviously mentally insane young man who has fired and killed a number of people, wounded others.
On Saturday, I was in my home watching NFL football.
I happened to be alone.
I haven't been to Tucson, Arizona in 20 years.
And all of a sudden I read it's my fault.
And I'm hearing people say it's my fault.
And that it's inspired by me and what I do.
I want you to put yourself in my shoes.
And then more and more powerful political people start standing up and making that claim, including the chief law enforcement official for that county, Clarence Dupnik, a law enforcement official who has the ability to influence jury pools.
And you know the power of law enforcement.
I've dealt with it myself before.
I'm minding my own business, bothering nobody.
This program does nothing but try to inspire people to be the best they can be.
This program takes aim at political opponents.
Can't say that anymore, I bet.
Well, that's too incendiary.
That kind of rhetoric takes aim at political opponents.
Nevertheless, I'm just supposed to smile.
Oh, that's just the sheriff.
Oh, that's just the media.
Oh, that's I've had the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, accused me of racism at a White House correspondent center.
I've had that same president blame me for the Oklahoma City bombing.
And now, while I'm watching a football game last Saturday afternoon, I'm listening to the entire Democrat Party and media complex blame me for what happened in Tucson on Saturday and in the sheriff out there.
Now, I ask you, you all know that I am a political enemy of these people.
These are the people that keep talking about limiting speech with the fairness doctrine or other.
The other day, Al Sharpton goes to the FCC to want hearings on me to get them to curb what I can say.
And he came out of there claiming the FCC is interested in holding these hearings.
Look, I'm not telling you people anything you don't know.
You know that there are constant assaults on the existence of this program.
There are constant serious political efforts made to terminate this program and all of talk radio, Fox News, and what have you.
So we have this incident, and now I have to sit here and just let it roll off my back that I'm responsible for this.
Anything I say is overreacting to it.
What I see is the Democrat Party, its representatives, and its supporters on the American left attempting to take a genuine human tragedy, and their first instinct is to politicize it.
And that desire, their political desire, is to silence, to quiet people who they consider their opposition.
Me, people who do what I do, and Fox News.
If that is not profiting, attempting to profit off murder, I don't know what it is.
But Mithra Limbaugh, that was very vithuous to say it that way.
See, this is the problem.
The truth is the great casualty.
And what do you think the target is when people begin to say, we've got to dial back this heated rhetoric?
Truth is the great enemy to the Democrat Party.
Truth is the great enemy to the American left.
They have to wipe out truth whenever they can and wherever they see it, because truth is not them.
So it was not intended yesterday as a media tweak.
I intended to say these people profit off of these.
They try to.
Their first instinct, they couldn't help it, every time something like this happens is to advance their political agenda.
We know that part and parcel of their political agenda is to shut this radio program down, to shut down Fox News, to shut down all of what they call conservative talk radio.
We know that this is what they seek.
You've got Jim Clyburn out today saying we need the fairness doctrine back.
Despite now clear-cut evidence, this shooter was in no way, shape, manner, or form affected by what happens on this program.
Quite the opposite.
This man was affected by media creations of leftists.
We have pretty good evidence here that one of the things that really upset this man or what he influenced him was a series of documentaries and movies.
According to reports, in fact, let's keep the sound bites going.
I want to play number three again, Zach Osler, this morning on Good Morning America.
And by the way, the New York Times talked to the guy, too.
I have to think the guy told the New York Times the same thing.
He said to Good Morning America.
They edited it out.
Again, Ashley Banfield, what, this is Scott, this is Zach Osler, one of the friends of the shooter.
What was his motive in Saturday's attack?
What about all this speculation?
He may have been fueled by partisan politics and rhetoric in the media.
He did not watch TV.
He disliked the news.
He didn't listen to political radio.
He didn't take sides.
He wasn't on the left.
He wasn't on the right.
He didn't listen to political radio.
He disliked the news.
He didn't take sides.
He wasn't on the left.
He sounds to me like he's a candidate for membership in the new low labels group.
This guy sounds to me like he's the model citizen for this bunch calling themselves no labels and other political consultants who seek to identify the great undecided, the great independents, the great moderates, and try to influence them to vote for the candidates that are paying them to get them elected.
This guy doesn't sound like a political partisan.
We know that his history with Gabrielle Giffords goes back to 2007.
We know that she had sent him a note thanking him for attending one of her public appearances, and he had written on the note, they found the note.
And I'm going to quote accurately, so forgive me here if you're offended.
The note says, die, bitch, die cops.
The note she wrote to him, that's his scribble on it.
The letter thanked him for attending an event of hers, was found in a safe in his Tucson home.
They have a New York Times story that I'll dig out of my stack here in mere moments about the Republican agenda proving how they hope to profit from this, a tragedy.
In fact, there's a one of the New York Times stories that I have today is almost a threat to John Boehner.
All right, you better cancel what you were going to do now that this happened.
You better don't even think about repealing Obamacare.
Now, you better not do that.
Don't try to tell me these people are not advancing their political agenda on the backs of the wounded.
They always accuse us of trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, do they not?
They always accuse us of making the homeless homeless.
Here they are attempting to advance their political agenda on the backs of the dead and the wounded.
I don't know how else to describe it, exactly what's happening here.
So, Ms. Banfield, another portion of her interview with Zach Osler, after Osler said that Lochner wasn't on the left or on the right, never listened to political radio, Ashley Manfield said.
Instead, he points to this online documentary series called Zeitgeist as the gas on Lofner's Fire.
It's a documentary movement that rails on currency-based economics.
I really think that this Zeitgeist documentary had a profound impact upon Jared Lofner's mindset and how he viewed the world that he lives in.
It wasn't just Zeitgeist, according to reports.
The shooter's favorite films, in addition to the documentary Zeitgeist and Loose Change, the movies Donnie Darko and A Scanner Darkly.
Now, Zeitgeist is a 2007 documentary that asserts Jesus Christ is a myth, that 9-11 was orchestrated by the government, and that bankers manipulate the international monetary system and the media in order to consolidate power.
So a conspiracy movie put together by deranged leftists, it turns out, appears to be, according to his best friend, the most influential media event of this young man's life.
Loose Change is a series of films released between 2005 and 2009, which argue also that the 9-11 attacks were planned and conducted by elements within the U.S. government.
So he's a truther.
Or he bought into this notion that people like a couple of Hollywood lefties, I forget their names, have advanced the notion that Bush was behind all of this.
9-11, the government was.
Donnie Darko, 2001, A Scanner Darkly, 2006, are movies about altered states of consciousness and brainwashing.
So, left-wing documentary makers are not to blame for his actions, even though his close friends identify left-wing documentaries and movies as highly influential.
How come Hollywood is not to blame?
And guess who's also escaping total blame here?
Let me identify that person by asking you a question.
If George W. Bush were president today, who do you think the media would be blaming for this?
George W. Bush and the war in Iraq and the lies about weapons of mass destruction would have been responsible for driving this guy crazy.
Plus, of course, Bush was behind 9-11.
But Obama somehow escapes.
But who is it that has this hard-left agenda not supported by the majority of Americans?
Who is it that's the author of a hard-left agenda not supported by the majority of Americans shoved through without reading a healthcare bill that might make a sick man a little crazy?
Has Obama unified us as was his promise, his intent?
As we saw last week, analysis of the last election shows that Obama, his party, and their tactics have split us right on racial lines.
Oh, come on, Rush.
Now you're really reaching for it, blaming Obama.
Oh, come on, folks.
Sarah Palin.
Sarah Palin.
I don't know what she was doing Saturday.
For all I know, she was hunting a moose, maybe watching football.
I have no doubt, but I know that she wasn't in Tucson.
Nor were any of the people who've been accused of this.
Speaking of the BAMST, let's do a little flashback.
March 18th of 2009 in Washington, after Obama delivered remarks on the South lawn about bonuses on Wall Street.
Remember, the shooter thought bankers were part of a conspiracy controlling the world.
Reporters said, Mr. President, new round of bonuses from these contracts are coming out.
What could you say to the American public to quell the anger?
Because people are angry about this new round of bonuses coming out.
There are more bonuses.
It's said to be coming for AIG executives.
I don't want to quell anger.
I think people are right to be angry.
I'm angry.
What I want us to do, though, is channel our anger in a constructive way.
It's very important to remind ourselves that there are a whole bunch of folks now who are feigning outrage about these bonuses that a year ago or two years ago or three years ago said, well, we should never meddle in these compensation plans.
These are the best and the brightest.
They know what they're doing.
That's part of the market.
And now suddenly they're outraged.
Right.
So here's a guy whose favorite movie is Zeitgeist.
Jesus Christ is a myth.
9-11 was orchestrated.
Bankers manipulate the international monetary system and the media to consolidate power.
And the president of the United States in 2009 says, I don't want to quell anger.
I want you to be mad.
I'm mad.
Come on, Rush.
You can't seriously mean.
I'm just.
Hey, look, there's more basis, in fact, for throwing.
If you want to start talking about blaming people that aren't responsible, it's a two-way street media.
You don't like how it sounds?
Join a club.
I stand corrected on something, well, it's major, but minor in terms of an error.
I said that ABC News did not post the Zach Osler story, his comments that the shooter, Mr. Lofner, did not listen to political radio.
They did post it, but they buried his comments about talk radio.
I've got the link to the ABC News website online.
The revelation that Loffner did not listen to talk radio or the news did not make the first page of the ABC News story.
It wasn't mentioned by ABC until the 12th paragraph of their story.
Now, that happens to be purposeful because what has been the mantra?
What's been the template, the narrative ever since Saturday?
It has been that Lochner was influenced by the mean-spirited rhetoric heard on this program, Fox News, and other talk radio programs.
That's been the template.
And the discussion has been: not what are we going to do about mentally deranged people?
Not what are we going to do about sheriffs that don't do their jobs.
Oh, what are we going to do about Limbaugh?
What are we going to do about Palin?
What are we going to do about talk radio?
So ABC News, Good Morning America, bumped what for them was a major scoop, which has been the topic of the news cycle for four days.
They bumped it in New York for a snowstorm.
And who outside of the environs of New York City cared about weather in New York City anyway?
So will Dupnik now apologize?
We have ABC, Good Morning America, and the 12th paragraph of their website story.
His friend says he never listened to political radio.
We'll be back.
Stay with us.
On the day of the shooting, we know that officers stopped the suspect.
They let him go, but they stopped him.
He slipped through the sheriff's hands.
It's kind of rhetorical to ask if the sheriff, Mr. Dupnik, will apologize.
But Dupnik, the sheriff, knew that Jared Lofner had written die bitch on that note from her in 2007.
He knew.
He knew that on the day of the shooting, which calls into great question the motives, Sheriff Dupnik here, in the way he has conducted himself since the shooting and since he decided to go public on television with his idle speculation as to the reason for the shooting.
From a layman's perch here, it appears that Sheriff Dupnik has been acting with malice as he runs around and blames Sarah Palin and blames me and others who do what I do for this sordid incident.
Will Obama say tonight in his remarks in Tucson that Dupnik acted stupidly, as he did in describing the actions of the cop in Cambridge?
Will Obama castigate Dupnik?
No, this is not going to happen.
He called Dupnik and thanked him yesterday.
He called Sheriff Dupnik, the president did, to thank him for his great work in keeping Pima County safe and following up in his efforts to find out what happened here.
So, no, Obama will not castigate Dupnik and the rest of the media and the Democrats jumping to conclusions.
He will not insist on holding a beer summit with Dupnik.
Why was that die bitch note covered up?
I mean, it's now how many days?
Saturday, Sunday, Monday, four days.
Four days, and we are still learning about all that.
Why did the media bury that information?
Why did Good Morning America bury on their website till the second page, the 12th paragraph, the good friend saying, yeah, he didn't listen to political radio.
He didn't like the news.
Well, exactly.
The allegations are far more interesting than the facts.
The allegations, the speculation far more interesting to the media, which would also love to see talk radio shut down and put out of business along with Fox News.
You can't take that out of the equation.
You can't call this an isolated incident.
This is just the latest in a pattern.
Here's Jim Clyburn Monday night on NPR's All Things Considered.
The host is Robert Siegel.
He said to Congressman Clyburn, I want to ask you to draw upon your own personal experience in your life.
People are commonly saying that the political environment nationwide is today more vitriolic, more toxic than ever.
You're an African-American from South Carolina, and you came up at a time when a black man who asserted himself could face really serious consequences.
And there was nothing unusual about death threats at that time.
Does this really compare to, say, the 60s in South Carolina?
During the 1960s, we saw the Cal Prague.
We did see some murders, and they were very, very unfortunate.
But we didn't have the internet back then.
We had restraint on speech back then.
I came up in a time that the fairness doctrine did not allow media outlets to say things about a candidate or a person in public office without giving that person equal time to respond.
And I really believe that everybody needs to take a look at where we are pushing things, and men need to take a serious step back and evaluate what's going on.
So a question about 60s racism in America related to an event Saturday in Tucson becomes we have to get the fairness doctrine back because elected officials don't have the chance to respond to all of the lies that they claim are being told about them.
Is there more hate and bigotry now Or back in the times of the civil rights movement.
More hate and bigotry now.
I mean, that's insane to claim that there's more hate and bigotry now.
Besides, racism got nothing to do with this.
Racism, not one thing to do with what happened in Tucson.
Yet that's his expertise that the NPR people wanted to call it.
Here's the New York Times story.
Carl Hulse for Boehner Rampage imposes its own agenda.
Speaker John Boehner expected to spend his first celebratory weeks as the new leader of the House showcasing his party's differences with Democrats.
But the shooting rampage in Arizona upended those plans.
Now Mr. Boehner is being called on to play a far less partisan role, leading Republicans and Democrats alike through a difficult period.
How he performs will not only be critical in shaping his national image, but also could frame his relations with his own party and with the Democrat minority.
So here is the New York Times trying to, a despicable munch, trying to use this terrible tragedy to threaten John Boehner and the rest of the congressional Republicans into going back on their promises and to defy the clearly expressed will of the American people last November.
So once again, the media, Democrat accomplices all, seeking to gain political advantage over this shooting.
It's everywhere you look on the left, this attempt to politicize and advance their agenda.
This is a, as far as the Times is concerned, a subtle brand of psychological terrorism.
What they and the rest of our one-party media want is a neutered Republican House of Representatives.
And who knows?
They might get it.
The title for the Times webpage for this story is this, Tucson Shooting Upends Speaker Boehner's Plans.
What their assertion should read is, let's hope that the Tucson shooting upends Speaker Boehner's plans.
Rampage must impose different agenda on Boehner.
That's what they're hoping for.
And the shooting rampage in Arizona has got to upend Boehner's plans.
And we at the New York Times are hell-bent on seeing to it that that happens.
Aware that a crisis can play out politically in unforeseen ways.
House officials say decisions are being made day to day and depend on factors like the medical condition of Representative Giffords and the other shooting victims and on the national mood.
Now, if that's true, it's preposterous.
I mean, as tragic as these shootings are, they should have absolutely no bearing upon the issues facing Congress in the upcoming weeks, such as getting spending under control, such as repealing Obamacare.
What does the shooting have to do with that?
It doesn't.
It has not one iota to do with it, unless you are part of the Obama regime hoping to use this to intimidate Republicans into just abandoning their agenda because we at the New York Times and elsewhere in the media are going to say that your agenda is divisive and your agenda helped lead to the climate.
And your supporters and your media helped create the climate that led to this shooting.
And so, Speaker Boehner, if you know what's good for you, and if you know what's good for your supportive media, if you know what's good for the country, you'll abandon your agenda.
That's how they take an unfortunate tragedy like this while claiming to be heartbroken for the victims.
They're behind closed doors eagerly rubbing their hands together, strategizing how they can use this incident to advance their political agenda and do great harm to their political opponents.
The commentators, right and left, make that left and far left actually, are telling us that toning down the political rhetoric will improve our national body politic.
Let's take that premise.
If liberals really want to improve the political debate, I have some suggestions on rhetoric that can be toned down.
I would first ask the media and President Obama and the Democrat Party to tone down all this class envy rhetoric.
I'd stop with all the lies about the evil rich getting richer on the backs of the poor and about the rich who pay most of the taxes in this country not paying their fair share.
I would, if I were the far left, I would stop all this talk that is pitting one economic group of people against another.
I'd get rid of it.
It is creating to a climate of distrust and anger and resentment.
I would also ask the left and the Democrats tone down the anti-business rhetoric.
Try to acknowledge for once we have the best environmental track record in the history of the world, that we have the highest living standard thanks to American innovators.
All of this talk about big oil, big pharma, big plastic, big retail as being the enemies of the American people.
Stop it.
What are you going to do?
Require Target to change their brand name?
How many Target stores are there with their logo and icon all over the store and their printed materials?
You're going to take after them next?
And along the same lines, those of you on the left, I would tone down all the anti-capitalist rhetoric.
Acknowledge that free enterprise has bought more prosperity to the world than any other economic system.
Tone down all the anti-doctor rhetoric.
President of the United States accuses American doctors of doing unnecessary surgeries for personal profit in the midst of the healthcare debate.
And again, all the rhetoric against big pharma, big food, big oil, big plastic, big retail, big everything, big profit.
It is the left that has an enemies list.
And it is every high-profile success story having to do with capitalism in America.
I would also say, those of you in the civil rights industry, how about toning down your rhetoric?
What is it that gives you license to call everybody who disagrees with you on anything from affirmative action to illegal immigration racists?
In fact, those of you on the left, you've got to stop something else.
Every time somebody disagrees with you, you call it hate speech.
You've got to stop that.
You're creating a climate here that is unstable.
You're creating frustration and anger.
Notice how the left gets a pass on all this every time this entire topic comes up.
The left, harmless little angels out there just trying to make sure all the bad guys don't get away with it.
What about Reverend Wright's rhetoric?
Obama said he could no more disown Reverend Wright for what he said than he could disown his own white grandmother.
There's some pure hate in Obama's church that he heard for 20 years.
And then after you leftists start toning down your rhetoric, start toning down your policies that rob Americans of their freedom and their prosperity.
If you do all of that, if you leftists take my advice, the political climate in this country will improve beyond measure.
The happiness quotient will improve beyond measure.
Economic prosperity will once again become the order of the day.
Happiness will spread far and wide throughout the country.
But then that doesn't help advance your agenda, does it?
You need chaos.
You need people feeling displaced and aimless.
You feel people needing worried about the future so you can set yourselves up as the saviors and the solution.
Yeah, it's pretty offensive.
Pretty offensive to listen to the architects of all that's wrong with this country blame people who have literally nothing to do with anything they're being accused of doing.
You're a guiding light through times of trouble, confusion, murkiness, tumult, chaos.
And even the Good Times Rush Limbaugh at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, Sarah Palin, has posted a video speech and comments on her Facebook site to respond to all this.
You know what the template of the day regarding that is?
Sarah Palin has taken the occasion of this event to insert herself into it.
I kid you not.
From ABC's The Notes, Sarah Palin once again has found a way to become part of the story.
I'm incredulous.
I shouldn't be, but I'm incredulous.
This is ABC News The Notes.
Sarah Palin once again has found a way to become part of the story.
Yeah, just like me, she was sitting around peacefully somewhere in Alaska minding her own business on Saturday when the drive-bys of the Democrats made her the story.
She was the first person blamed for this.
So I guess now, according to ABC The Notes, she's just supposed to let the torrent of criticism leveled at her roll off her back.
She's supposed to enjoy this.
Sit back, Governor Palin, just enjoy it while we in the media give you the once-over.
And so now that she's produced a video eight minutes long, Sarah Palin has once again found a way to become part of the story.
They marvel at how she has made herself bigger than the president in this story.
Here's some excerpts of what she said on her Facebook page.
President Reagan said, We must reject the idea that every time a law is broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker.
It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.
Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own.
They begin and end with the criminals who commit them.
Not collectively, with all the citizens of a state, not with those who listen to talk radio, not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle, not with law-abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies.
Not with those who proudly voted in the last election.
Sarah Palin once again has found a way to become part of the story.
It's just shameless.
It is irresponsible.
Just the brazenness of it.
I don't know what she was doing Saturday, but I know she went in Tucson.
She had nothing to do with this.
Now she's found a way to become part of the story.
Just supposed to sit around and take it, I guess.
Here's another excerpt from her Facebook video.
Hours of a tragedy unfolding.
Journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.
That is reprehensible.
There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal.
And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently.
But when was it less heated?
Back in those calm days when political figures literally settled their differences with dueling pistols?
Our founding fathers knew they weren't designing a system for perfect men and women.
We must condemn violence if our republic is to endure.
Sarah Palin Facebook excerpts back with more after this.
From the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, Sheriff's Department and community college officials in Pima County are refusing to release a wide range of public documents about the shooter.
The Pima County Sheriff's Department, Pima Community College, have declined to release documents that could shed light on run-ins they had with Jared Lofner in the months prior to the shooting.
Sheriff Dupner Dupnik will not release data on the suspect.
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